First published in November 2012

NEWS-BITE | Digital | Social Media: Tesco has relaunched its YouTube channels in a bid to simplify and provide more consistency across its social media activity. The supermarket previously had nine channels on the video-sharing website. Moving forward it will have five channels with consistent branding, one of which will curate content from the other four.

The new YouTube strategy is being handled by digital agency Zone, which Tesco hired to better “understand how to manage our video content with consistency and efficiency so it best serves our customers”, the supermarket’s digital marketing boss Tom Daniel told Marketing.

For big brands with multiple messages to communicate to multiple audiences, it can be tricky to know whether to have single or multiple profiles on the big social media networks. For global brands, there’s also the question of how to separate out regional messaging. But too many separate accounts quickly becomes confusing for consumes, and hard to coordinate for social media managers. Some of the old Tesco YouTube channels had not been refreshed with new content for up to two years.